I guess somebody in the marketing department at Best Buy is reaching. They want to stir things up a little. Best Buy is offering a free iPhone 3GS tomorrow to “qualified” buyers, the company confirmed via Twitter on Thursday. Of course you have to sign up for a 2-year contract. There might be a mad house tomorrow at Best Buy, but something tells me different. Don’t get me wrong, The iPhone 3GS is a great phone, but it’s dated. Apple will outing the iPhone 5 in the summer of 2011. After all, it’s only the 8GB model. Some people can’t wait and some people are switching from other carriers, others are just at the end of their contracts. We will see.

Google introduced a  new “Cr-48″ laptop. This is the very first Chrome OS laptop. Google will move the laptop through its Chrome OS Pilot Program. It’s a public beta. You can join the program. Lookout, though, only limited number of the laptops available. When? somewhere in mid 2011 for the public. Google’s giving them away in exchange for feedback. It will have a 12.1 inch screen, oversized clickpad, 802.11n dual-band wifi, webcam and flash storage. For details on the specs, google it of course. Oh yeah, they have partnered with Verizon to give you 100mb of data for free. Dig it. No-frills notebook and the thing is supposed to boot in 10 seconds, yeah!

It looks like the iPad2 is going to make it’s splash in April of 2011. It’s is predictable. The iPad was voted the “most wanted device” for Christmas. Although, this is just a rumor, it’s a good rumor. The people over at DigiTimes seems to think so. It seems the Apple is still in the midst of firmware testing, but production should start in Jan ’11. With all the Android discussion lately, the iPad is second billing (for now). I do hope they put 2 cameras in it. NFC would be a plus too. Also, I hope the the rotate lock/mute switch becomes user definable. Oh yeah, make it lighter!

NFC is an acronym for “near field communication”. The technology is not new. It’s like bluetooth or RFID. The new Nexus S has it built in. Apple is probably going to put it into the iPhone 5. The Notion Ink tablet may get it too. It is an extension of the ISO/IEC 14443 proximity-card standard.  The process is still not quite mature yet, but you know how that goes; most likely it will be used in more and more smart phones. It works by magnetic induction, much like the power mat works for charging up gadgets. Also, the cordless toothbrushes are using NFC. Supposedly, it is a one-way communication, but that may change too. You have to be close for this to work, somewhere around 10cm (4 inches) The tech is being used in Japan and Europe on an ever-growing scale. Like most technology these days, the hackers will be busy, trying to hack the thing.